Donte Taylor is the Manhattan Regional Manager at the New York Restoration Project (NYRP). The NYRP runs many community gardens around Northern Manhattan. In this article, Donte explains how a community member can become a volunteer in one of the New York Restoration Project’s community gardens.

Q: How can the average person get involved at an NYRP community garden?

A: At each garden there is an NYRP contact person whose phone number is posted on a bulletin board outside the garden. You would call that person’s number at the NYRP. Then he or she would either give you the name and contact information for the garden supervisor, or give you the date of the next garden meeting, which is a general meeting that everyone who works in the garden attends. If a plot is available, then you will have to go through a trial period to see if you are committed to helping out in the garden. Each garden has its own rules for the trial period. At some gardens, for two weeks you would help clean the garden, do some weeding, that sort of thing. If that goes well then you have your plot and will get a key to the garden.

Q: Can people volunteer at NYRP? And if so, how would one go about finding out about volunteer opportunities?

A: We always have volunteers, pretty much all year around, whether it’s planting trees or just doing work with in the community gardens. To become a volunteer you can sign up online or email volunteer@nyrp.org. You can also check our events calendar online to see what volunteer days are coming up.

We also have large community days during which big companies like JetBlue, American Express, Home Depot, or Target, have hundreds of their employees work with us for a day of education and community service. At these service days, we teach the company’s employees how to properly plant a tree, what kinds of weeds to remove from a garden and how to remove them, and a lot of other gardening basics.